Price fixing? Price controls? A pig with lipstick is still a pig.

It appears that Wall Street investment bankers can breathe easier today, they’re going to get their holiday bonuses after all. That was really close, it almost didn’t happen until the President came to the rescue this afternoon.

The news just keeps getting better for Wall Street bankers, er, I mean the soon to be foreclosed upon housing speculators, er, Henry Paulson’s BFFs, er, nevermind. One wonders who is making the list and checking it twice for the rest of us. Not the President, that’s for sure.

President Bush announced today that he intends to “freeze” interest rates for those homeowners who agreed to mortgages that reset at rates higher than their monthly salaries. Huddling with Wall Street bankers (and a Saudi prince or two) he courageously stepped forward to “shore up” the market with a price control scheme (insert memory audio here of Al Gore intoning “risky tax scheme”).

Let me get this straight. Profligate lenders gave “no doc” loans to non-qualified buyers. Those loans were sold into a secondary market whose principals looked the other way when it came time to verify the ability to repay. Of course, all the pigs at the trough were fat and happy when times were good but now that there is no one left with home equity to borrow against, Wall Street and their coterie of supplicants are crying (and apparently now, all the way to the bank) for financial “relief”.

Sounds like I should have taken out a loan before it was too late. Wait, maybe I can still apply …

Blue Collar Muse